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    Unavailable
    The Burden of Bad Ideas: How Modern Intellectuals Misshape Our Society
    Unavailable
    The Burden of Bad Ideas: How Modern Intellectuals Misshape Our Society
    Unavailable
    The Burden of Bad Ideas: How Modern Intellectuals Misshape Our Society
    Audiobook9 hours

    The Burden of Bad Ideas: How Modern Intellectuals Misshape Our Society

    Written by Heather Mac Donald

    Narrated by Anna Fields

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    In closely reported stories from the streets of New York to the seats of intellectual power, MacDonald shows how bad ideas get started and then acquire a life of their own. Her reports trace the transformation of influential opinion-makers and large philanthropic foundations from confident advocates of individual responsibility, opportunity, and learning into apologists for the welfare state. The prevailing orthodoxy of ideas, she finds, has affected our schools with ruinous consequences for our children. While these beliefs have damaged the nation as a whole, she observes, they have hit the poor especially hard. When it comes to urban problems and social policy, The Burden of Bad Ideas is more than a breath of fresh air. It's a cold shower.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateMar 12, 2001
    ISBN9781415911105
    Unavailable
    The Burden of Bad Ideas: How Modern Intellectuals Misshape Our Society
    Author

    Heather Mac Donald

    Heather Mac Donald is the national bestselling author of The War on Cops, a Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and a contributing editor of City Journal. A former aspiring academic with roots in deconstruction and postmodernism, she has been the target of violent student protest for her work on policing. She received the 2005 Bradley Prize for Outstanding Intellectual Achievement. Her writings have also appeared in The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, The New York Times, The New Republic, and Partisan Review, among others. She lives in New York.

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    Reviews for The Burden of Bad Ideas

    3.5/5

    15 ratings2 reviews

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    • 5/5
      From 1999, but gave me a good insight into how early identity politics and victim culture have been around
    • 1/5
      This is one of the worst books I have tried to read in some time. The facts seem to be in order, albeit very selectively chosen to support a rigid, right-wing ideology. Her interpretation of the facts is where this book falls down. She often takes outrageous sounding events or quotes out of context, thus making them seem all that more outrageous. In most cases what she shares could easily be interpreted quite differently than she chooses to. Not only is she extremely biased, she also conveniently leaves out any facts that might refute, or weaken, her one-sided conclusions. After the introduction and one chapter I had to quit. I couldn't take any more. The only people who will likely enjoy this book are those who are already extremely conservative and close-minded.